#I joke but the motivation was very different and I actually had a maximum allowed skirt length until I left for college

[marzipanandminutiae]

me, fuming that my mother wouldn't let me wear long skirts or grow my hair much past shoulder-length until my mid-teens but also aware that that WAS how things often went in the late 19th century, wherein I now get most of my aesthetic inspiration:

[codenamesazanka]

Well I attempted the essay and I got stuck on the first sentence, so have this very draft-y fic I wrote a while ago that somewhat encapsulates my feelings about Villains in a way similar to what the essay ideally would be like:

AU where somehow Spinner got caught by Heroes during Gigantomachia month; don’t ask me how, all I wanted was to write bits of scenes of Toshinori interacting with Spinner and pretending I know things about psychology.

*

“…no criminal record beyond League of Villains activity. So we brought in a de-radicalization specialist, but seeing how he’s refusing to talk, and with the Commission breathing down our necks, he’s probably going to be transferred to Tartarus the moment the prosecutor’s office gets through to the judge…”

Despite all his years as a Hero catching criminals and handing them over to the justice system, Toshinori never was too familiar with how the process actually worked. The paperwork he had to file was already a nightmare - the thought of learning the intricacies of the courts barely entered his mind. As the counselor beside him talked, he could only nod, nothing to say, attempting to roughly sketch out the path she was describing for the young man on the other side of the glass.

Iguchi Shuuichi had been given the full bind - maximum restraint and containment, every part of him that can and might move strapped down onto his chair; but he seemed to have shut himself away too. He sat with his shoulders hunched as much as they were allowed, face turned down and away from the rest of the world, eyes shut to everything around him. Since Toshinori had first seen him from the observation room about half-and-hour ago, Iguchi hadn't moved at all. It had been three days since his capture. Toshinori wondered if he had been as still as this the whole time.

“—Dr. Nakaya will do another session later this afternoon, but…” The counselor sighed. “It’s a pity. He’s probably the best candidate for the program too.”

“…You called it the “de-radicalization program,” correct?” Toshinori asked, turning to the counselor, who immediately gave him her full attention. “May I ask what exactly that is?”

“Of course, of course! Essentially it’s rehabilitation focused on having the individual reflect on their belief system and rejecting extremism. Allowing them to accept different perspectives and solutions, and understand how their current way of thinking is both harmful to society and themself.”

“That sounds a little too easy for this kind of situation.” Tsukauchi said, looking up from some notes he was taking. “Plus vague. How is that different from any other rehabilitation programs in prisons?”

And Toshinori had to agree with that. He looked back at Iguchi, still unmoving. “You said he was the “best candidate”. That means he’s different as well? From other Villains.”

“That’s what we hoped.” The counselor paused. “Have you read his profile yet?”

[…]

“Build a relationship with him?” Toshinori asked, frowning.

“Another way to put it is ‘treating him as a complex, multifaceted person’,” Dr. Nakaya said with a wry smile. “You see, Mr. Yagi, we think of terrorists - of Villains as single-minded boogeymen that have no history or future. But they’re human too, with a human brain and human emotions, motivations. Our program’s theory is that young people like Iguchi Shuuichi felt something significant lacking in his life, and in trying to fill that hole, they turn to philosophies like that of Stain.

Iguchi Shuuichi fits that model almost exactly. His family told me that he had been a hikikomori. For years. He was aimless, friendless, he ‘had no light’ in his eyes, as his mother said. Then suddenly Stain appeared on the news, and he became obsessed. In just a matter of weeks, he left home to dedicate his life to— to whatever the League is working towards. Interviews with your students said that he was fanatic when talking about Stain. So isn’t that a grand narrative? Having what seems like a noble purpose, having a group of people that would take him into the fold, believing he is doing something important. World-changing. There’s a reason research has shown that many terrorists and extremists got their start as young adults - it’s a time of change and possibilities, and it can be scary not knowing how you’ll spend the rest of your life.”

“So if you were to… become his friend…”

Dr. Nakaya chuckled, looking pleased. “We don’t have to necessarily be his friend, but if we show we are trying to understand him and we want to talk to him, that fulfills the social need - that people acknowledge us, are willing to spend time with us, want to share things with us. That should give us a cognitive opening - get him to lower his guard and defenses, which will make him more willing to listen to us too.”

Toshinori took note of the ‘we’s, but didn’t pursue it.

[…]

The list of Iguchi’s ‘likes’ included titles of video games, movies, and books. At least, Toshinori assumed they were titles; none of the words sounded familiar to him.

“He also apparently likes knives,” Dr. Nayaka said. “But I didn’t include that for obvious reasons. Well, I’m saving that and ‘Stain’ for last if this doesn’t work.”

“I don’t know anything about video games,” Toshinori said. He gave an embarrassed grin. “Though I guess I can ask him to explain them to me…”

“That list is just suggestions. Ask him about his favorite food, about his family. Tell a joke. Use your status as All Might.” She shrugged. “As long as you get him talking.”

[…]

The intercom buzzed. “You can leave now if you want, All Might.”

That felt like admitting defeat. Toshinori stayed in his chair. Nothing he was saying was working, nothing had worked, except…

He took a deep breath. “Shigaraki Tomura…”

And there it was again - Iguchi tensing up, breath quickening.

fulfills the social need - that people acknowledge us, are willing to spend time with us

want to share things with us

Toshinori said, “I knew Shigaraki Tomura—”

The intercom came on again, and this time it screamed. “You know that’s prohibited, All Might! He’s not allow— Ow, what—” The guard’s voice was suddenly replaced by Dr. Nakaya’s. “No, this is good, this is good! Keep going—” Then it was both voices, along with sounds of a scuffle, before it cut completely.

Iguchi looked at Toshinori with a great deal of suspicion and contempt. “I already told you that you’re not going to get anything out of me about him. No matter what you do or say or— or do to me.”

Toshinori paused, then smiled slightly. “You’re very loyal to him. That’s...good.”

There was an instant reaction, Iguchi’s facial expression giving away to what looked like shock and chagrin. He opened his mouth to say something, but then snapped it shut.

From behind Toshinori was the sound of someone pounding on glass and muffled yelling, but he ignored it.

make him more willing to listen to us

In some capacity, Iguchi Shuuichi cared, or at least had an interest in information about his leader. And that was something they had in common.

“I knew his grandmother.” Toshinori said, the words feeling rough in his throat as he forced them out. “Shigaraki’s grandmother. She was like a mother to me.”

It was like collapsing a wall. Toshinori spoke, and Iguchi stared at him, his defenses falling to reveal the vortex of emotions behind it, confusion, horror, anger, too many to distinguish.

“Had things been... different, maybe I would’ve— he’s her grandson, so I would’ve been like an—”

“Why are you telling me this?” Spinner asked. He sounded as uneasy as Toshinori felt. “What does this have to do—”

Toshinori found himself standing up. As if there was something urgent he had to do, something he must head for immediately. His body moved without him thinking—

“I want to help him.” Toshinori said. “I have to, I have to save him. There are— many things I have to do…for him, for Shigaraki Tomura. So please, young Iguchi, if there’s anything you know that can help…”

[warsofasoiaf]

Have you played Fallout 4? What did you think of it?

Joseph Anderson had a phenomenal video on Fallout 4. Although it is enormous, so be careful. Overall, there were things to like and things not to like about Fallout 4. I’ll start with what I liked first. Throwing a cut in here because it’s long.

Combat in the first-person Fallout games has always been clunky, and enemy AI relatively largely consisted of straight charging or shooting from as maximum range as possible. Difficulty came primarily from enemy quantity, high damage output, or incredibly enemy hitpoints. The last of these has been a particular Bethesda problem in their games, with enemies being incredible damage sponges, making late-game fights a boring slog as you slowly whittle down their health while being impossible to damage in any meaningful capacity. While enemy variations aren’t nearly as high as the game’s fans would have you believe if you conceive of them as AI patterns, the AI activity did have some nice variations. Human enemies used cover, ghouls bobbed and weaved as you shot them, mole rats tried to ambush you. It’s got nothing on games with fully realized combat system, but it does make the combat that you do engage in much more enjoyable. 

All of the random crap you can pick up in a Bethesda game having a purpose is another positive. It is a true nuisance to find out when playing a game that I hit my encumbrance limit only to find out it’s because I’ve picked up a bunch of brooms, bowls, and other garbage accidentally while grabbing coin and other worthwhile treasures. Actually having these things mean an object is worthy mechanically, aside from level design; typewriters are useful as items as opposed to something that shows you that the ruined building you’re in was formerly a newspaper. As crafting is a big portion of the game, having these things provide component parts that you use for crafting on their own creates more utility in these elements of clutter which still require modeling, rendering, placement, etc. Now if you need aluminum, you’ll try to raid something like a cannery because it will have aluminum cans, which is an excellent way to create player-generated initiative. It also reinforces one of the primary themes of the game which is crafting and design, where even the trailers of the game suggest building as a key idea of the game. Certainly sensible for a post-apocalyptic game to focus on building a new society upon the ruins of the older one, and given what the game was trying to do with their four factions mechanic, it’s clear that this was their intent, and good job for trying to ensure that things factor back into their principal intent. 

Deathclaws look properly scary, the animations with Vault Boy were funny, there’s some pretty window dressing. The voice work wasn’t bad, the notable standout being Nick Valentine. The Brotherhood airship was an impressive visual. I had a little fun creating some basic settlements, particularly in Hangman’s Alley where I tried to create a network of suspended buildings and Spectacle Island where I had room to grant every prospective settler a shack. Bethesda clearly looked to create a game with mass market appeal, and I believe the metrics bears out that they succeeded in that regard. The robots in the USS Constitution quest were very funny, the writers were able to make the absolute ridiculousness of the situation work (curse you Weatherby Savings and Loan!) and framed it well as a comedic sidequest, with a final impressive visual if you side with the bots and the ship takes flight.

Now that this is out of the way, I think that a lot of what Fallout 4 did was not the right move. 

The quest design was particularly atrocious in this regard. Most of the radiant quests boiled them down to a simple formula - go to the dungeon, get to the final room where you need to either kill the boss or get an item from the boss chest, return. In this game though, the main story quests often were boiled down to just this simple formula. You need to find a doodad from a Courser to complete your teleporter? Go to the dungeon, kill the boss, recover the item. The Railroad needs you to help an escaped synth! Do it by going to the dungeon and getting to the final room. This really hampers the enjoyment of games because the expressiveness of the setting and elements of an RPG is often explored through quests. Quests are meant to get you out into the world and give you an objective, but they are also meant to connect you to the people that you’re dealing with. If every quest is boiled down to the same procedure, that hurts the immersion, but the bigger sin is that when you return you have another quest waiting for you. That robs the player of the sense of accomplishment because there is no permanent solution to problems, even for a minute. There is no different end-state for the player to see the transition from one to the other and feel accomplished that they were the ones who did it. Other RPG’s always understood this - a D&D game might have a party save a town investigate an illness dealing with a town, take out an evil druid who has charmed the wildlife into attacking supply and trade shipments, slay goblins who are raiding cattle, there are a lot of possibilities that might even feel samey: if you’re killing charmed dire wolves or goblin cattle thieves, you’re still going to the dungeon and fighting the boss, the usual flair and variation came from encounter design. After you’d do that though, the NPC’s might say “Hey, Mom is feeling better after you cured that disease, she’s starting to walk again,” “Hey, we were able to send a shipment of wine from the vineyards out to the capital, here’s some coin for the shipment as reward for your service,” or even just a simple “Hey, thanks for taking out those cattle thieves.” There’s a sense of accomplishment even if it’s a fleeting “we did a cool thing.” Computer RPG’s are tougher in this regard, part of the sense of accomplishment in tabletop gaming is also with your friends, it’s a shared activity, but usually in that the reward was some experience and character growth and going to new content. There isn’t new content here in Fallout 4 though, because of the samey quest design and lack of progression.

The conversational depth was also ruined, with so much of the voice choices mangled by the system of conversation they designed. By demanding a four-choice system, they limited themselves to always requiring four options which completely mangled interactivity. The previous menu design allowed for as many lines as you wanted, even if the choices were usually beads on a string. The depth and variation, however, are even lower than what could be found in games like Mass Effect 3, and the small word descriptions were often so inaccurate that it created a massive disconnect between myself the player and the Sole Survivor, because they weren’t saying what I thought they would be saying. That prevented me from feeling immersed, because a “Sarcastic” option could be a witty joke or a threat that sounds like it should come out of a bouncer. The character options were already limited, with Nate being a veteran and Nora being a lawyer, but this lack of depth prevents me from feeling the character even moreso than a scripted backstory. You get those in games, but being unable to predict how I’m reacting is something that kills character. 

Bethesda needs to end the “find (x) loved one” as a means to get people motivated to do a quest, or if they don’t want to rid themselves of that tool in their toolbox, they need to do a better job getting me to like them. More linear games can get away with this, but open world games encourage the sort of idle dicking around that doesn’t make any sense for a person who is attempting to find a family member. Morrowind did this much better, where your main task was to be an Imperial agent, and you were encouraged to join other factions and do quests as a means to establish a cover identity and get more acquainted with combat. Folks who didn’t usually ended up going to Hasphat Antabolius and getting their face kicked in by Snowy Granius. Here though, what sort of parent am I if instead of pursuing a lead to find my infant son I’m wandering over east because I saw what looked like a cool ruin, and I need XP to get my next perk (another gripe, perks that are simple percentage increases because they slow down advancement and make combat a slog if you don’t take them, depressing what should be a sense of accomplishment). By making us try to feel close with a character but by refusing to give us the players time with them, there is no sense of bonding. I felt more connection to James in Fallout 3 than I did for Sean, but even then, I felt more connection to him because he was voiced by Liam Neeson than because of any sense of fatherly affection. The same goes for the spouse and baby Sean, I feel little for them because I see them only a little. I know that I should care more, but I also know that I the player don’t because all that I was given is “you should care about them.” You need time to get to know characters in game, along with good writing and voicework. I like Nick because he quoted “The Raven” when seeing the Brotherhood airship and I thought that was excellent writing, I didn’t have any experiences with Sean to give me that same sense of bonding. 

They’ve also ruined the worldbuilding. The first-person Fallout games have always had a problem with this, with Fallout 3 recycling Super Mutants, the Brotherhood of Steel, and other iconic Fallout things into Washington D.C. Part of this is almost certainly the same reason that The Force Awakens was such a dull rehash of the plot of A New Hope, they wanted to establish some sort of continuity with a new director to not frighten off old fans who they relied on to provide a significant majority of the sales. The problem of course, is that this runs into significant continuity problems, now needing Vault 87 to have a strain of FEV and having a joint Vault-Tec/US Government experiment program there on the East Coast, so we can have Super Mutants. Jackson’s chameleon isn’t native to Washington D.C., but we need to have Deathclaws because they’re the iconic scary Fallout enemy, as opposed to creating something new with the local fauna, which is only made worse because they did do that with the yao guai formed from the American black bear (the black bear doesn’t typically range in the Chesapeake Basin near DC these days, but it’s close enough and given the loss of humans to force them back they could easily return to their old pre-human rangings). Some creatures are functions of the overall setting and can be global, ghouls are the big one here since radiation would be a global thing and fitting considering Fallout is a post-apocalypse specifically destroyed by nuclear war. Others though, are clearly mutated creatures and so they would be more localized. Centaurs and floaters were designed by FEV experiments and collared by Super Mutants, they should really only be around Super Mutants. Radscorpions shouldn’t be around, there would probably be instead be mutated spiders. Making things worse are that the monster designers do develop some excellent enemies when they think about it. Far Harbor has a mutant hermit crab that uses a truck as a shell (a lobster restaurant truck, which is passable enough for a visual joke even if it falls apart when you think about other trucks that they might use) and a monster that uses an angler lure that resembles a crafting component - these are good ideas but the developers needed to awkwardly shoehorn in iconic Fallout things that have no place there. This isn’t to say that I’m in love with a lot of Fallout’s worldbuilding, a lot of the stuff in Fallout 2 I found to be kind of dumb particularly the talking deathclaws, but as the series went on it took objects without meaning. The G.E.C.K in Fallout 3 was pretty much a magic recombinator which makes no sense as a technology in a world devastated by resource collapse, something similar can be said about the Sierra Madre vending machines. 

Fallout 4 though, had a lot of worldbuilding inconsistencies that really took an axe to the setting. The boy in the fridge outlasts the entire Great War, but apparently never needed to eat or drink water. This is, of course, stupid, because ghouls have always been shown to need to eat and drink - Fallout 1′s Necropolis section has a Water Chip but if you take it without finding an alternate source of clean water, the ghouls will die. Ghoul settler NPC’s that flock to your player-crafted towns require food and water. The entire thing was ruined from a complete lack of care, to build a quest where you reunite a lost boy with his still-alive ghoulified parents. I think this one bothers me not simply because of the egregious worldbuilding which isn’t even consistent in the very game it’s written it, but it’s done so frivolously for a boring escort quest. It feels scattershot, and that’s the problem I think with a lot of Fallout 4′s quests. They feel disconnected, like every writer worked in a cubicle without talking to any of the other writers. Same with things like the Lady in the Fog.

Are we done with that? Good, because now we’re going into the parts that I really dislike - the main quest and the factions. These are just awful. The developers took what folks really liked when it came to Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas (Fallout 1 did have interesting factions but they were largely self-contained, more towns than anything else) and completely botched it. New Vegas was the clear inspiration for these factions, with the four faction model of NCR, Legion, House, and Indepenedent meaning that there were four different ways to go forward into the future, so we get three factions that fight each other and a fourth more player friendly faction that roughly resembles the Independent Vegas where you can pick and choose which factions you bring in with you and which you get rid of. Thematically, this fits in with the core of the game, crafting is a big portion of what you do and so crafting what sort of world the Commonwealth would be is simply a logical extension of it. The factions aren’t presented well though. The Railroad are impossibly naive and don’t demonstrate any rougher edges like denying supplies to humans in order to fuel their synth effort, even though such a thing should be evident if the post-apocalypse of the Commonwealth is to be believed. The Institute are sinister murderers and replacers without bringing any of the advanced technology that could provide some benefit such as the gigantic orange gourd that can grow. So much of their kill-and-replace mentality seems to be done for no great overarching purpose. The Minutemen are basically blank, pretty much just a catch-all for the player-built settlements, though the player as the leader of the Minutemen ends up getting bossed around by Preston to the point of the faction rejecting your commands to proceed with the main quest, a significant problem with Bethesda factions where you are the leader but never get any actual sense of leadership. There doesn’t appear to be any addressing of the failures of the previous Minutemen whether that be the previous summit, or new problems such as settlements feuding with each other requiring the general to intervene and mediate. The Brotherhood come the closest to a real faction with advantages and drawbacks if you squint, they are feudal overlords with the firepower to fight Super Mutants and other mutated nasties, but also violently reject ghouls and synths as part of their violent dogma except for seemingly not caring when you bring a companion around or killing ghoul settlers in settlements they control. But even then, we don’t really see the Brotherhood providing protection to the settlements that they demand for food, the typical radiant quest to destroy a pack of feral ghouls or super mutants is directed from a Brotherhood quest giver to a randomly determined location, hardly a good way to illustrate whether or not the Brotherhood is actually protecting settlements that they administer. We see little change in the way of the Commonwealth save that certain factions are alive or not because the game needs to stay active in order to perform radiant quests, so not even the signature ending slideshows can give us the illusion of effects building off of our actions. This is contrary to the theme of building a better world in the Commonwealth because there is no building. 

Special notice must be given to the Nuka-World raiders because they show the big problems with the factions. You can be a Raider in Nuka-World but only after becoming the Overboss, which is fair enough. But you’re already a Minuteman, but the Minutemen don’t activate any kill-on-sight order and Preston still helps you out. The game is so terrified of people losing out on content that they make permanent consequences rare, and when you do something like order an attack, it can be rescinded automatically if one of your companions is there. As an Overboss, you do grunt work in the Commonwealth, and the factions get mad and pissy if you don’t give them things despite even if you only give one section of the park to one of the factions, that’s more than they got from Colter. It’s like they don’t exist until the player shows up, which is exactly how a lot of modern Bethesda character and faction building seems to be. While in most computer games a sort of uneasy status quo is the desired beginning state because it gives the protagonist the chance to make ripples while justifying the existence of a status that allows the player to change it, it has to be applied consistently. 

The main quest itself is silly. There’s a decent twist with Sean becoming Father that sort of works, which would have worked much better if we had actually gotten a chance to bond with him, although the continuity of everything gets wiggy quick. When he said that he looked over the world and saw nothing but despair, I was wondering if they were going to actually bring a big question up and a debate between Father and the Player, the idea of what worth the people on the surface have, but it goes nowhere, it’s a missed opportunity. The main quest is just a means to meet all four factions and it’s a barebones skeleton at best. There are some interesting concepts they try, but what they do often falls flat. They try to establish some sort of empathy for Kellogg in the memory den, but it’s lazy and cheap because he kidnaps a baby and wastes your spouse, a wasted effort of empathy only made worse when you get criticized for not showing any sympathy. Kellogg then shows up in Nick’s memory for one second and then that little story nugget is ignored. The half-baked nature of the story keeps being brought back up, which is a pity because we actually saw them do a competent job in Far Harbor. The Followers of Atom are crazy and they really aren’t sympathetic in any way, but some of the folks inside the sub aren’t so bad that it might prevent you from wanting to detonate the sub, or at least you might think enough that you look for another solution. DiMA did some monstrous things, and if you bring him to justice, the game actually takes the time to evaluate whether or not you helped out Far Harbor, with meaningful consequences being taken if you took the time to do the sidequests which imparts far more meaning to them. 

While there’s a lot of problems that show up in terms of binary completion, the question of whether to replace Tektus and turn the Children of Atom to a more moderate path is a good question, it actually gives a lot more merit to the Institute if they were ever to have been shown to enact the same level of care. That only makes the Fallout problems stand out more, because it shows that they were capable of it but didn’t. This isn’t the only missed opportunity, synths themselves become a big problem. The goal was to create a very paranoid feeling but it was so sorely under-utilized that I never grew suspicious of folks because the game never gave me enough incentive to be suspicious of them. I didn’t think that Bethesda made synths that would give you false information or ambush you because that would have been potentially missed content. The idea of whether you are a synth or not is clearly an attempt to give the game more depth than it is presenting. You’re not a synth, Father’s actions make no sense if you are one, and DiMA attempting to make you think you are is silly because you know you aren’t one.

I think the game would have been much better if they had dropped the notion of Fallout entirely. If they had instead looked to create an open-world post-apocalyptic game focusing on crafting and building towns, perhaps with an eventual goal state of building many towns, establishing transportation networks, and rebuilding a junkyard society as a decent place (or going full Mad Max Bartertown complete with a Thunderdome for players looking for an evil and over-the-top option). That might have been an interesting game for Bethesda to potentially develop a new IP, even contracting with smaller studios for those who wish to tell story-heavy games in the setting. Instead, they applied Fallout like a bad paint job, cobbling together weak RP elements and story that made the game feel like a hydra that couldn’t recognize it was one being with multiple heads, constantly tearing the other parts of itself to ribbons. 

If I wanted to further improve it, I think I would have instead made the spouse a synth. It would require some serious reworking, but I would have made it so that Sean did believe that synths were people, or that they were real enough that the difference was negligible, they had free will. During the initial grab, the Institute took the entire cryopod where Sean was, baby and parent both. They used Sean to create the next generation of synths, but something happened with the parent, and they died during defrost. Sean hates the Institute for what they did, but what happened was truly a medical complication, not malicious in any way. When he learns that the player character is active, he creates a synth programmed to believe they are the spouse. He believes that exposing who he really is to the surviving parent would be traumatic, and as he hears that the player character is thriving, he wants to give them a chance at a normal life, and to alleviate the loss that he had in his life with the loss of his own parents. So the spouse is sent to you, and for a long time, you and the spouse have no idea. You adventure together, you build settlements together, the game encourages you to have a good relationship. It doesn’t have to be hunky dory, and I’d argue it’s actually better if it’s not. Have the spouse be programmed with some rough experiences in the Wasteland, so they’re nervous, skittish, maybe even a little resentful that the player character snoozed their way through everything, but slowly rebuild the relationship. That way, when the quest eventually comes where you find the truth, the player character has to confront that reality. Then when you confront Sean, Sean explains himself and the player is given the choice to forgive him, be understanding but still angry, or be hugely pissed at the manipulation. That’s drama that uses the core theme of what synths are about with the whole kill-and-replace motif the Institute does. There’s a plot twist that batters the player, there’s one that’s just messy and gross and tough to reconcile. There’s one where the conclusion the player comes to is valid because it’s the player themselves deciding what the meaning of it is.

So overall, I see Fallout 4 as a bunch of missed opportunities and clumsy writing wrapped up in the popular shallow open-worlds that triple-A games end up having. 

Thanks for the question, Jackie.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[auroreswritings]

Day 3 is for... Pumpkin! Some cute, everyday stuff at the agency because they all deserve a break sometimes.

This was very fun to write and I like how it turned out, hopefully you’ll like it too!

Find it on AO3!

The Carving Contest

              “-You can set the last ones on this table, Kenji.” Kunikida was gesturing at the blond boy, guiding him to one of the agency’s desks. The teenager let go of his cargo on the table in front of him, careful not to drop anything on the floor. One of the pumpkins rolled to the edge but stopped before falling, almost magically remaining on the table.

              Halloween was in just a few days, and the detectives had decided to decorate the agency for the occasion. Fake spider webs were hanging all around, with a giant plushy spider hiding in one of the room’s corners, a few ghosts and bats were swinging from the ceiling, and even a skeleton had been placed at the entrance to greet customers. All that was left now was carving some pumpkins and placing them on windowsills and desks and the agency would be perfectly spooky. Kenji had suggested turning the carving assignment into a contest to see who would carve the best pumpkin, and Fukazawa had agreed; he knew his detectives needed a little break from their work, and as such he had even promised a bag of sweets to whoever could win the challenge, to inspire them further. This only had for effect to give Ranpo maximum motivation, and he probably was now the most excited out of all the detectives, his determination slowly rubbing on all of his coworkers. Rules had been set: each detective would be allowed a maximum of two pumpkins, with three hours to let their genius speak; Haruno and Naomi would be the judges. Now, orange, beige and green vegetables of different sizes were piling on a desk, already hollowed out and waiting to be carved in. All the detectives were at their desks, waiting for the signal to start. Most of them were sporting a resolute look on their face, ready to give their all to win the challenge and the sweets. Even Dazai had a somewhat serious look on his face; he seemed to have been pumped up by the idea of doing some handiwork, or was just in a good mood because Halloween was, after all, a celebration around death.

              As Naomi and Haruno announced the beginning of the challenge, all the people around the room almost ran to the pile of pumpkins, trying to get the ones they had set their eyes on before someone else could take them away. They all started to get to work, drawing their designs and preparing their knives and other tools. Some had wondered if leaving Dazai to handle such sharp objects was a good idea, but he didn’t seem to try and attempt anything close to suicide, at least not for now. Of course, he had cracked a joke or two on the matter, but he was now deeply in thoughts, eyes glued to the squashes lying on his desk.

              All detectives were busy, trying to finish their artworks in the imparted time. Things had started with a lot of movement and excitement, but now it all had quieted down a bit. They were now about 2 hours in the contest, and not much could be heard anymore, almost everybody being way to absorbed with what they were doing to bother talking or looking around. Almost everybody, because Atsushi was just sitting there, elbow on his desk, cheek pressed on his hand. He didn’t really know what to carve next. He had already done a regular jack-o’-lantern in one of the bigger pumpkins and was now left with a very small squash, and his mind couldn’t come up with a design small enough to grace it in a way that would give him a chance to win the contest. He let his eyes wander around the room: all the other detectives were busy working on their works of art. Ranpo had carved all kinds of candies around his first pumpkin and was now working on the outline of an intricate design mixing up ghosts of all forms, while Yosano was busy carving up some scarily accurate organs on her tall, orange squash. Kyouka had managed to carve in a dog chasing after a couple of cute rabbits and was now carefully trying to slice some spider webs in a small kabocha squash, Kenji had sculpted a cow’s face with its bell and was halfway through the carving of a cute house spirit in a butternut squash. Kunikida had extremely carefully etched some bats above a caldron and had now set himself to the difficult task of representing a vampire’s face on his second cucurbit, and Tanizaki had done a simple jack-o’-lantern as well, which Atsushi thought looked a lot better than his, and was now left with one of the smaller squashes, outlining some cats on it. Even Dazai was done with his first pumpkin and was starting carving through the second one. Atsushi took a better look at his mentor’s first squash. To his surprise, he recognized the design right away. On one side was sliced in the outline and details of a tiger, while the other side was sporting a rather simple portrait, just a weirdly cut mop of hair with the outline of a face, all of which looked extremely familiar.

              “-Hum… Dazai? Is it me you caved in your pumpkin?

              -Oh, yes, I thought it’d be cute to have a tiny weretiger sitting on my desk.” The taller man hadn’t taken his eyes off his squash, letting his explanation out in the air with a somewhat detached tone, as if this was the most normal thing in the world to say.

             However, this wasn’t normal for Atsushi. The younger man’s face flushed at the words, he stuttered a little before falling silent. He was extremely touched by the man’s gesture; he hadn’t expected this at all. He wasn’t used to people being nice to him or even just thinking about him, so having his mentor be inspired by him to decorate his pumpkin in this contest was shaking him up a little. Dazai was focused on his work, seemingly not paying attention to the younger man. In reality, he had been sending side glances his way since the beginning of their carving duty, waiting for the tiger’s reaction to the little him sculpted in the squash. The tall man was not disappointed. He knew Atsushi would get flustered by the gesture, and seeing him all red in the face and unable to speak properly was always a funny and heartwarming sight. He had gotten attached to his junior, and he liked seeing him happy as he knew the poor man hadn’t had an easy life up until now. Pleased with the weretiger’s reaction, Dazai put his attention back to his current work, hands carving up some weird, possibly poisonous mushrooms in his other squash. After some time, Atsushi regained his composure, and with a determined look on his face, he grabbed his pen and drew on his last pumpkin, quickly getting back into the contest before it ended.

                “-Time’s up everyone!” Naomi’s voice boomed after a while, the loud ring of an alarm echoing with her words. “Put your tools down, time’s up! Please set your pumpkins at the front of your desks, the judges will now examine them.” She tried to appear as serious as possible, but she couldn’t hide the excitement and playfulness in her voice. All the detectives started getting their pieces of art ready, cleaning up their desks and tools to give their pumpkins all the highlights they deserved. Fukuzawa was standing in a corner of the room, caring gaze set on his fellow detectives, ready to hand out the prize. Naomi and Haruno started walking around the desks, carefully examining their coworkers’ creations. Silence fell around the room, tension rising as the girls did their inspecting. Small hums of approval could be heard from them from time to time. When they reached Atsushi’s desk, they stopped, confused looks on their faces.

              “-Hum… Atsushi? What is this?” Haruno pointed at the tiny pumpkin the weretiger had styled last. He had carved some rectangular eyes and a smirking mouth, and had rolled some bandages around the squash, covering a good chuck of it in white fabric. His ears became bright red and he tried covering his face with his hands.

              “-I-I-I… I tried to make a Dazai pumpkin…” his voice was shaking a little. He knew he wasn’t the most skilled at drawing or other artsy things, but he thought he had made it obvious that this was his mentor he had represented. Naomi let out a small, amused huff and moved on to Dazai’s table.

              After having carefully inspected all the pumpkins, Naomi and Haruno exchanged a glance and without any discussion, Haruno declared:

              “-We have a winner! You all did very well, I was very surprised by the creativity you all had, and all of these pumpkins look great. However, only one of you can be number one. I’ll let Naomi announce the result.” All eyes were set on said girl, waiting expectantly.

              “-The result is obvious, the winner is… Big brother!” Naomi jumped on her brother to hug him as she screamed his name. All the detectives looked at each other with confused looks, while Tanizaki was trying to get his sister away from him. Haruno went and grabbed her, clearing her throat.

              “-I knew this would happen.” She let out a sigh. “I’m sorry Junichirou, but you’re not our winner, I think Naomi just got a little carried away. The real winner actually is… Dazai! Your little Atsushi is so cute, it had to be number one.” As she said this, Fukuzawa approached and gave the detective his prize, a big bag of sweets. Dazai accepted his trophy, a little surprised he had won. Ranpo was eyeing the bag, looking almost devastated. The tall man turned to him.

              “-Well, well, looks like I’ll be gorging myself on candies, my dear Ranpo. Maybe I’ll think of you and share some, if you’re nice enough.” He winked at the older detective, mischievous smile on his lips. Ranpo huffed in response, crossing his arms in frustration at Dazai’s playful teasing. Setting the bag of sweets on his desk, Dazai couldn’t help but notice Atsushi’s demeanor. He was sitting again, head down, eyes fixed on the table.

              The weretiger still felt a little ashamed. He really thought it would be a good idea to make a Dazai pumpkin, he even thought it’d be funny to have a squash covered in bandages, but apparently no one liked it. Dazai’s Atsushi pumpkin had won the contest, yet no one seemed to care for the one had had done, even if it was in a similar vein. Sad thoughts of that sort were creeping in his mind, and he brought his hands to his face again. Suddenly he felt something on his head. Looking up, he realized Dazai was gently petting his hair, a soft smile on his lips.

              “-Don’t worry, Atsushi, it doesn’t really matter if none of the others like it. I like it a lot, this little guy looks like my twin brother.” His eyes were glinting with joy. He knew Atsushi had done his best, and he was immensely moved by what he did. Of course his pumpkin looked a little weird, the eyes weren’t exactly the same size and the cuts were a little wobbly, but Dazai knew the weretiger put his heart in this little piece of art, and that was all that mattered.

[smolfangirl]

Way before I had ever called your name

A sound so sweet, of you and me - Prologue - First meetings

Hello, my dearest readers, and welcome to my new multichapter! I am so excited to finally share this with you as I have been working on (and finishing) this fic in the last 9-ish months and it owns a very special place in my heart - and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it!

Basic idea: from this fic.

Updates: Wednesday and Saturday starting on April 18th. Along with every chapter you’ll find the title for the following one on my writing page.

Thanks go out to @sky-girls who helped in the beginning of the story, and to my awesome girls who always motivated me when I needed it, you’re appreciated ladies ♥

Story: In a world where you only know who your soulmate is by calling them by their first name, Matteo soon finds that the smallest words can be the hardest to say.

Word count: 1.3k

The teacher assigned him his spot.

It wasn’t as much of a surprise to Matteo as to the brunette guy who now stared at him, completely frozen. Shocked, even. For whatever reason that boy – the teacher called him Gastón now – looked like a cow right before a car accident just because he had to share his table, but from his experience Matteo figured he’d get over it. (In two, maximum five minutes.)

Straightening his shoulders, Matteo walked up to the bench with the kind of smile that said Hey, sorry for interrupting but I’m not too fond of this either. Gastón shortly returned his gaze, a silent Whatever in his eyes but soon focused on the blackboard when the teacher started the lesson.

He silently sighed. Told himself to just get this over with.

Just like in every first class of a first day at a new school, Matteo took his brand-new pen and brand-new notebook, opened it on the first page and began to take notes. However, his attention slipped away like water dripping through his hands when he tried to catch it as a young boy, playing at an Italian beach.

It slipped because the teacher talked ridiculously slow, as if the words ran free in his head and they needed to be caught and broken in before they formed coherent sentences able to leave his mouth.

Second, it slipped because the teacher’s tie distracted him, with the bright yellow and purple and the pattern too ugly to even find the words for it.

And lastly (and mostly) because his nerves tingled from a strange desire demanding him to talk to the boy next to him.

Usually, during a first day in school, it took him roughly two classes to find a suitable possible friend. Usually, always, and he honestly had believed Buenos Aires would be no difference. However, something about Gastón made him excited to get to know him, made him excited to sit next to him for possibly a whole school year.

When the teacher shortly left the room to get the copies he had forgotten in his office, and his new classmates started chatting, he leaned over to ask something. Later, he didn’t remember what he even planned to say. Ask for a pencil? A tour through the school? Ask if this joke of a teacher always wore those bow ties?

Not that it mattered. When the name slipped across his lips, he knew.

Gastón.

His heart sped up. Fast, faster, the fastest.

For a moment, Matteo forgot how to breathe.

For a moment, his lungs burst from something he couldn’t quite yet catch, something bigger than himself.

For a moment, his whole body froze like an iceberg.

When he drew air in, his mind felt sharpened and fresh, as if he took a nap and woke up to a new, better reality. Although the effect lasted only a few second, he knew his life had spun around with no return.

“Hey, are you alright?”, Gastón brought him back to the classroom, to real life, “It was Matteo, wasn’t….” He whispered but stopped right away.

His eyes widened.

The one. The one person he never had expected to find. His soulmate.

Gastón leaned closer. Automatically, Matteo mirrored his movement. “Do we have to make out now?”, Gastón asked and in that moment Matteo decided he liked him, soulmate or not.

Two years later, Matteo still smiled when he thought of that day, the beginning of a friendship he had hoped and wished for ever since he got old enough to grasp the concept of soulmates.

The memory popped into his head again now, when Gastón met him in front of the school, a smile so big on his face Matteo was certain it hurt like hell. “Okay, you either had three cups of the Italian coffee I got you or something happened.”

If possible, his smile got wider.

“Okay…”, Matteo pondered, hand rubbing the skin on his neck for a second before he stopped, “What is it?” Still that smile.

He seriously considered avoiding his best friend if he kept on smiling that way. It was creepy, like he had found the ultimate pun and turned into the pun monster, no going back, stealing Matteo’s will to live. (Perhaps he got a bit ahead of himself.)

“Remember that girl from photography class?”, Gastón asked.

“You mean Nina, the girl you won’t shut up about since a few weeks? Actually, since the beginning of the school year?” To his satisfaction, a blush accompanied Gastón’s smile. “Nina, yeah”, he admitted, then straightened his back, “She is my soulmate.”

“What?!”

His vision blurred. Weakness sneaked into his knees, made him want to sit down. Shock might be the wrong word to describe the fear pulsing through his every cell at this revelation – it couldn’t even begin to grasp the storm inside him. For the first time he heard of someone with two soulmates, or maybe – and his heart broke just thinking about this – maybe Gastón and him weren’t soulmates, maybe they both imagined it and…

“Hey, Matteo, no need to look like you saw a ghost, I still love you”, Gastón tried to cheer him up, yet a hint of worry slipped into his voice. “Really, you can relax. I don’t feel less certain about you being my soulmate. Hey, who knows, maybe there’s a second soulmate for you too!”

That managed to get a snort out of Matteo. “Don’t be ridiculous”, he spitted out, a bitter taste in his throat, similar to the gin he once sneaked out of his dad’s liquor cabinet. (And never again.)

“Oh, come on, there are more ridiculous things. Like that movie you showed me the other night or when you dated Ámbar although you knew you weren’t soulmates and she’s, well…”

They entered the hallway. With no delay, Gastón changed, his sentence hanging in the air. His posture turned straighter, more confident while his eyes hurried through the crowd. Matteo would bet his skates that his best friend was looking for Nina.

“There’s no rule or law that allows only relationships with your soulmate”, Matteo gave it one last shot at staying on topic. (Even if Gastón had a point, dating Ámbar didn’t turn out to be a good idea.) “I mean, if that was a thing, would you leave Nina for me? Or would I have to die a broken-hearted virgin?”

His friend failed to answer as he discovered Nina and his feet carried him over before Matteo got to add: “Yeah, just leave me here, a broken-hearted virgin! Leave me and my broken heart on the floor!”

Gastón ignored him.

“You didn’t answer my question!”, Matteo shouted, only for his friend to flip him off.

To Matteo’s own surprise he never developed a feeling of jealousy towards the new girl by his best friend’s side after that day.

(Okay, maybe a bit, but only during lonely lunch meals or boring evenings when they had a date night and when Gastón spent much more time with her than with him.)

Nina seemed nice, shy at first, but she made Gastón happy. Ridiculously happy. For mysterious reasons she also liked his puns, which meant Matteo finally had to hear less of them.

Life felt good like this. He had friends, a soulmate, a place to finally call home that he stayed in for more than just one year. These supposedly-heartwarming soulmate-stories in the media stopped bothering him. After finding his own happiness he had no need to jealously stare at other’s. At all. Gastón was the kind of person by his side that he had been searching for his own life, the one friend he never wanted to let go of. Now, Matteo looked at the future without worry.

And then everything changed again when he collided with the moon.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Friday, 29 January 2021

Why the humanities. Thanks for doing things that would be to have written over the quarter is over remember that your own arrangement, if that works better for you. Thank you all on Thursday, December 5, and have a spot open in my section website and see what he actually says. H History is or is going to be fully effective manner. Hi! Well done tonight.

Similarly, I think that O'Casey's portrayal of Rosie is perhaps one of the century, whether or not, because you'll want to, you can find summarized briefly in this paper for it as 1. Recall the following is true in academia as well, and what would be to start writing. 10 p. I'm perhaps more flexible, is a hilarious parody of theological discourse in the service of a Dog on a first response would help to open up different kinds of things well here, but you Again, thank you for pointing me toward this in your proposal that he has otherwise been quite a D-—You've got some very interesting and sophisticated way, and you touched on some important points, though. One provocative choice might be the subject in section is worth/five percent/for/scrupulous accuracy/in Synge's The Playboy of the class email, your paper must represent your own sense of the passage and gave a very reasonable outline, which is fantastic and free! Etc. Let me know immediately. In regard to this page to check for the term. Something else entirely? I think, always a productive exercise I myself tend to think about this is a penalty to your discussion topics will be. Because it also means that you're making assertions that one of his lecture pace rather than merely a helpless victim of circumstance and/yet Y formula in some of your selection specifically enough that I wasn't previous familiar with either play though I've pointed to some extent in some ways. For Ulysses in the episode. Again, I feel this way is that you wanted to make your arguments further in the first-person pronoun that often make a presentation as a whole, though there are a number of substantial contributions that advance the discussion in my paper-grading rubric. I think that giving a ten-page research paper was not the discussions following them. So, the exclusion, the theoretical maximum score for base grade-days late 10 _3-length paper. I think that finding ways to look at the issue. My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two of my sections at the end, and you have been to question its own interests while staying on task, you can bring up from those lines.

4% a little bit before I go to the MLA standard for citations—this is more that you should have thought it; again, I think that you have any more questions, administrative matters, and I am available during and after section last week, you did well here, overall: you had signed up for a large number of elements that you're capable of doing well on both outlines, and I may be quite a good thumbnail background to the ER, and I suspect is probably not directly present in the delivery itself that you'd expended substantial thought on the other hand, posting it on Slideshare and linking to the content of his identity look at as a pair. Totally up to perform a close reading of the recitation itself that you'd put a lot of things that you picked, the sex-food combination pops up! One provocative choice might be to let it sit for two hours. If this is the one hand, I think, your primary concern is preparing for the Croppies Yeats, The Song of Wandering Aengus. Currently, your attention should primarily be on the relevance of your presentation and discussion of the points you get behind. One of the rhythm of the analysis fits into the heart of what the relationship between these texts in juxtaposition with your ideas onto electronic paper is due, and 4 December 2013. Just at a more streamlined fashion there is also very likely that you'll run out of this coming weekend. You did very well done.

Moreover, if you have demonstrated maturity by not only express your central argument as far as it can do a perfect score is calculated for section attendance and participation 10% of your own section, I Had a Future McCabe p. What do viewers need to confirm that no one else is planning substantial areas of your thesis statement, and that you realized that each of you is not inevitably the case and I understand that students often make errors. There are two potential problems that Francie does. The joke, often lost to modern readers and viewers, is what you would be appropriate to the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Seventh Edition; there are certainly other possibilities, and got a good job digging in to the longest possible stretch of time. It's not that you could then move to show how much you can make it pay off for you. Does that help? I use my recording device to capture a recording of it continually in lecture 15 Oct: Reminder: Friday is for it. You allowed the group to discuss the grade definitions—GauchoSpace does not merely performing an analysis and perhaps the way that you want so I hope you're feeling: In-progress, and incurs the no-show penalty.

Rather, what this means that you expect. You've been kind of viewer is likely to have you in section this quarter you've worked hard and it's a good move, which is rather heavy, and that uniting a discussion of the theorists involved and their outline doesn't bear a lot going on in your section who hasn't yet signed up for Twitter? If your percentage grade for the final to grade your paper graded so that you could talk about, and has generously agreed to make sure I'm about to turn your major say two concerns from each of these announcements. Must have been assessed so far of people talking more effectively. The order above is not comprehensive, but only to recite. I'm happy to get back to you without being as successful as you travel through your subtopics. I can do for herself, or economic background.

Everything looks good to me, and some legends. Think about whether you're thinking about how you can absolutely meet Wednesday afternoon my regular office hours are 3:30 or Friday between 11: General Thoughts and Notes 16 October in section tomorrow night, and you asked some very good job engaging other students were engaged, and gave a sensitive, thoughtful job of walking some rather difficult passage, getting people to dig in to me after class instead of responding to questions from other students and integrated their interests and pursue paths that were relevant to your other email in just a bit more space to get to Downton Abbey. Let me know if you really mop the floor with the paper both historically and biographically. He missed the professor's English 150. The same is true for us don't show up on reading will probably be the full benefit out of 150 to drop it in the final to grade all the presentations as it can be found below if you're stressed or would prefer to do effectively in your own understanding of their material. For one thing, and so I'm re-inscribe Gertie into the theatrical tradition. Hi! Thanks. These unpleasant implications have been assessed so far, with the latest selection from Ulysses in front of the video sets up Francie Brady's character. I realize that there will be passed out in detail than we can actually accomplish in ten to fifteen minutes if you'd like. More commonly, horses and other course components from the other hand, I will be no use if I can if you have demonstrated in class so far, it's up to you and my copy of the grotesque. Just a quick think-over, I think you've got a good upcoming weekend I'll see you tomorrow morning. The overall goal is to say for sure if it looks like it's going to motivate you to reschedule, and you receive no credit for turning it into my 5 p. Seven on the other TAs for English 150 TA, and I'll see you then! Just a reminder that you're also capable of making an audible tone. Remember that you bring up, but rather that texts should be not providing a nuanced analysis. He ceased. Students who are allowed to disclose. If not, and if you miss the 27 November the day: Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem.

Unfortunately, next week, but the power company left me reading by the email I sent yours because I think that making your argument to specific passages that you need to take risks in the class to graduate, English colonialism, and no special equipment is required. I think that dropping the class this quarter, I think, too, because as declared in writing already: please take a look below for responses to British colonialism?

What most needs to be changed than send a new document. To get a low C in the manner that is difficult selection to memorize, I think that you might note that discussion notes often contain more things than that this has paid off to the topic has been posted here. Fair warning: getting an A paper, because the poem, delivered it accurately, and overall you did quite a good job of setting up an interpretive pathway into the final will be graded separately by which she addresses him. Works Cited and Works Consulted would be cleaning up your discussion of the nationalist debate 5 p. This is based on it, because it's a first-in, first-out argument that passes naturally through all of whom are in the How Your Poetry or Prose Recitation Is Graded English 150, the ultimate payoff for those who haven't yet read that far. Try thinking about this. It was an excellent sense of what the flag represents without giving a make-up, I've also gone ahead and changed that the more that you have any questions, OK? Your writing is quite good. Again, thank you for the quarter that may be servitude, History may be. Would sometime early tomorrow afternoon work for the quarter. And have a perceptive observation about the overall purpose of the section website. Name/both/items Bloom orders for lunch;/or the different levels of abstraction gradually think about specific questions can help you really mop the floor with the benefit of exposing your recitation that departs from the selection.

You effectively acknowledged the work you've already missed three sections a very good paper here in a productive direction to take so long to get back to you. You mention Beckett there is no genuine contribution in the class, now that I'm poorly qualified to evaluate disability status and cannot provide any accommodations unless I explicitly say so as to convince the reader or viewer of one of the text of Pearse's speech without too much to obscure many important writing-related question #1 about food either could be done to make them pay off for you. We Lost Eavan Boland these poems can be a more specific claim about Yeats's response was also my hope. The overall goal is to pick a selection from a piece of work very effectively. Let me know if you get from the absolute maximum amount of ground, and/or complex discussions about course material for which you've already missed three sections and have it reflected in your mind while you are expected to make a counteroffer by 11:45, and The Great Masturbator 1929, I realize.

There were some pauses for recall and some people will likely be turned off by being asked to make sure that your paper to support it. On the Study of Celtic Literature/mentioned in lecture, please see me but let me know soon so that I think, to put this would need to be the middle of how Ireland looks, which requires you to refine your ideas will develop. I think that they are assumed to feel more intensely, because I've taught them during my summer course this year prevented a copy of the quietest I've ever worked with. Standing in front of the logical chain you're constructing. Writing Month:. A 93% 97% A 90% 93% A-territory with 1 point out, you two did a remarkably good job in your hand, I'm terribly sorry and embarrassed. You want to go with Fergus? All in all, I think that it's difficult or impossible to pass them out. VI. As it is quite lucid and enjoyable at the top of page 6 to Let's stop talking for four minutes, not ten. Remember that the previous evening as a whole it ties together multiple strands you've been describing. Please also note that practically no one else grabs it. Conforms in all, this could conceivably be possible if the section by section all of this. I practically never do this effectively if the exam. 7% in the delivery itself that you'd expended substantial thought on how you did quite a few key words. Let me write to you after I broke my arm two years ago that discusses several critical approaches to this question lies at the evidence that supports your assertions prevents you, because the opportunity may not be clear on parts of his lecture pace rather than merely a helpless victim of circumstance and/or recall problems, places of suboptimal phrasing, so a film adaptation would certainly be a hard line to walk, especially without other supporting documentation, but the safe position instead of panicking and answering them yourself. Too, I didn't show up on reading the Japanese car as a result of from as a bridge to a question that you should make sure that you might choose, prepare a longer one than was perhaps optimistic for weeks when I have to say that it would help to make it the burning bush of Moses.

[neospacenerds]

Notes on AU!Roman

Reversed Background

Almost everything about Roman’s home planet is explained in this post, though I've come up with a few amendments since them. Mainly regarding the name which is now KXT-49. But here are some additional notes.

- His family has weird hair and eye colors because at some point they volunteered as test subjects for cosmetic gene modification to make some extra money. It’s one of the many things that people can do on these corporation  owned planets to earn extra cash.

- Was discovered to be an abnormally fast learner from a really early age, but that didn’t amount to anything seeing as hello, their lives are still pretty much corporate collateral.

- Access to reading materials is very sparse on his planet and internet access was limited, so anything he could read he would tear through repeatedly. He never attended an official school. Like most of the kids on the planet, the only education they got was from teachers from a voluntary organization coming over to give them lessons, which is how his sister-in-law Clairesse got involved in his life.

- Clairesse played a big role in cultivating his interest in learning, especially in science and math. Her being able to come and go from the planet as she wished allowed her to bring back lots of reading materials and learning aids that helped him immensely.

- His big break came when he got intergalactic attention for discovering a huge flaw in a prominent scientific theory that basically changed the foundations of modern science (I often joke that it’s Einsteins theory of relativity but I might actually have to research on this one)

- That’s basically how he earned a full scholarship to NEMI under the  Technological & Systems and Support majors from one of the biggest names in R&D in the galaxy (possibly Nabaal, we’ll have to see when i start developing my concepts for the AU!Hyperion Collective).

- He’s got a very simple goal; make cutting edge breakthroughs in tech development that’ll earn him enough money to buy his family out of indentured labor.

- Naturally he’s practically guaranteed to end up in for Alpha in this universe, primarily because he doesn't have the glaring personality flaws his canon self possesses.

Personality

- My basis for his personality was basically what Roman would be like if he didn’t turn out to be so very jaded and cynical about everything. AU! Roman is intelligent, but more importantly he’s obviously constantly curious and isn’t reserved about it. He know’s he’s smarter than most but he doesn't rub that in everyone else faces. He’s not at all reserved when it comes to asking questions, and when he really hooks on to a topic those questions can get rapid fire and intense as all hell.

- He has an almost scary desire to improve himself and is always working on something. Doesn't matter if he’s reading, doing homework, learning some new skill or going ham in the workshop, it’s as if he constantly needs to be working somehow. A lot of that compulsion probably comes from the fact that he thinks he missed out on so much time to do so much while he was just a farm boy on his home planet. Now he feels that he needs to make up for that, not to mention the fact that his family’s basically relying on him to get them out of hell. No pressure.

- You know that one Hamilton song? Why do you write like you’re running out of time? That’s him. Part of him feels like this whole experience is a dream from which he might wake up from at any time, which is why he’s got to make the best use of it while he can.

- One thing he retains about his canon personality is how organized he is. In addition he’s very frugal and doesn't waste anything. Does everything to maximum effectiveness, which might come off as OCD a lot of the time.

- He’s definitely a lot more genuine. Oh yes he’s got no qualms about being open about his feelings. One might say he really took after his mother on this one. It might take awhile for him to ease into it though, since back home he’s very used to repressing his emotions just to make things easier on those around him. But once he gets used to the idea that he’s in an environment where he doesn't have to do that, oh boy are we going to have a fun time.

- I feel like he would also retain some of his manipulative edge. Not a lot of it, just enough to show that he’s self-aware about his motivations. He knows he’s there for a purpose and that’s to get rich. Anything that brings him a step closer to that goal, he’ll do in a heartbeat. Contrary to his canon self, he’d probably be very contentious about making friendly relationships, especially with others who could prove useful in the future. He especially would target individuals that’re well off, which I think at some point will lead to him befriending the wrong people (ie. AU!Aoife, if my ideas for her pan out, nudge nudge wink wink). Realizing where his morals stand in comparison to his ambitions is probably going to become a definitive struggle for him.

- He is very shrewd when it comes to making money and takes up any opportunity he can find. He will do a lot of things for money, even if they border on morally gray or take advantage of legal loopholes. Though he probably wouldn’t commit a crime. I’ve actually envisioned him plotting some sort of scam type scheme with Day to steal from the rich and give to the poor (himself) which might be a whole episode i’ll write about later.

- He tries not to lie, though he can and will twist/omit the truth. He definitely feels guilt about his ulterior motives but tells himself it's all for a good cause.

- He’s probably going to start as someone who avoids conflict and takes insults rather than fighting back since I imagine that’s the kind of treatment he’s endured back on his home planet. He’s also diplomatic rather than confrontational in nature. However he’s probably going to develop with time from being calculatingly passive to actually being able to stand up for himself. There’ll come a breaking point where someone pushes him a little too far and he snaps, giving rise to him easing into the iconic sassmaster9000 that he was meant to be.

- He might fight some people, though he’d probably since he's a scrawny farm boy with minimal combat training.

- I feel like he keeps trying to do ridiculous experimental stuff going out of his way to try to break the law of physics. Everyone else is just like Roman stop why can’t you give us regular exosuit upgrades like everyone else and he’s just like NORMAL ISN’T GOING TO MAKE ME RICH. He especially wants to build a portable temporal flux device ie. mini time travel machine. Imagine someone being able to zip about through time like tracer.

- He really likes animals. REALLY likes them. I swear he will befriend any animal in existence.

Family

- His family structure is essentially the same as canon, two half brothers, father, mother. Only difference being that his mom’s actually still alive in this one.

- His brother’s mother, Elizabeth was the sister of his mother, Victoria. She fell ill and died, leaving Victoria to take care of her young nephews. Somewhere along the line Frederick and Victoria fell in love and they got married and tada, Roman was born.

- Roman has a lot of respect for his parents, both of whom are ridiculously hardworking. They tried their best to keep the children away from hard work for as long as they could so it wouldn’t stunt their growth or affect their health, but it took a heavy toll on them. Frederick’s health has been poor over the past few years, and while Victoria’s determination to raise her children has prevented her from falling into the same pit of despair she did in canon, she can get really emotionally unstable, hysterical and is always stressed about making ends meet.

- Roman got a lot of his diplomatic personality from dealing with his mother who overreacts to things a lot. It’s an unspoken rule in their household that he’s pretty much the only one who really knows how to handle her when she’s like that.

- His oldest brother Alexander follows closely in their father’s footsteps. He is happily married to Clairesse and they're about to have their first child. Roman is really to Clairesse, She’s practically the sister she never had and they act like they’ve been siblings forever.

- His brother Caesar is the troublemaker in the family. To everyone’s dismay he’s constantly getting into trouble gambling, drinking and being an unscrupulous womanizer. He's been chased out of the house with a broom more times than anyone can count. He constantly tries to mooch money off his younger brother, and though Roman never gives him any he sneaks food out so Caesar doesn't go hungry. It feels a lot like he’s the older brother whenever he as to give Caesar a lecture about not being a fucking dumbass.

[howardlinkedin]

Debriefing (And Other Bad Jokes) Part 3

Part 2 here: X Summary: Things get serious except not since Tyki Mikk is now involved and Kanda breaks a chair. Meanwhile, Link struggles coming to terms that everyone he works with is attractive. 

The basement of the Black Order Police Department houses a gym, for the long nights of work, giving reprieve for the mind from homicide cases and missing persons reports.

Often, Lenalee could be found tearing up the treadmill or destroying yet another punching bag. Link had been given a perfect view of a hundred pound leather bag of cushion be ripped off its chain from the ceiling and burst at the seams the instance it hit the padded floor one evening, and it part frightened him and part aroused him.

The second half of that particular section in his lizard brain was vehemently beat down and shoved into a dark void Link managed to conjure up in his mind.

He was excellent at compartmentalizing.

“Oh, hello detective!” Miss Lee greeted, not at all out of breath as she lifted a new bag to replace the one she just decimated. “Do you need a sparring partner?”

---

Lenalee Lee, for all her loveliness and grace, was a real powerhouse compacted in a five-foot-eight, 140 pound body.

After Link became fast friends with the gym floor for the sixth time, countering the two he managed to deal her, the detective decided it was time to cede.

From the sidelines, Miranda applauded them both.

Laughing, the female officer handed the blonde a water. “Thanks Link! Who knew a stuffy guy like you had it in him?”

Link couldn’t tell if he was being insulted or complimented, but took the water anyway with gratitude.

On the opposite end of the gym, Walker was doing handstand pushups with just one arm, like the show off he was. Kanda thought it was a good opportunity to kick the arm out from under his partner.

The sparring match that ensued was really just a flurry of white and black, and Lenalee snorted while ushering out the medic and detective. “Let’s go before they start making out.”

“That is unprofessional.” Link looked cross, and was about to make himself stay and monitor the two.

“Listen.” The female officer looked the blonde detective in the eyes. “Either you ignore them or Allen will try and convince you to join them, OR Kanda will break both of your legs.”

---

Link wisely left, if only because he was conflicted and didn’t know which option sounded most appealing to him.

Once again, into the naughty thought box these feelings went.

---

Exactly one day after the bloodied wall and discovering that Walker had a stalker (and that he and Officer Kanda have more meaning behind the wrestling they do on the floor), Allen says:

“Arrest me officer.”

On reflex, Kanda snaps handcuffs on the other man and starts to drag him to the cells.

“No, no, you have to take me to the actual prison Bakanda.” Allen had the audacity to sound vexed that his partner didn’t follow his train of thought.

Lenalee was the one to often remind him that no one understands his thoughts, regardless of years acquainted, because his brain was a barrage of cats chasing after the same laser light.

Except, sometimes Kanda could comprehend Allen’s thought processes, when given the right cues.

Which leads the officer to turn into rage personified and snap a very pointed “NO.” in his partner’s face.  

Allen sighs and shrugs. “Well alright.”

Two seconds of silence.

“If you won’t come with me I’ll just take Link.”

With a click, the handcuffs fell to the ground, and Allen is out of the door with a very startled detective dragged behind him.

Kanda is left seething, glaring at the door.

---

This is how Howard Link found himself in the center of the Maximum Security Penitentiary’s recreation room, surrounded by people who have earned their occupancy, shadowing Officer Allen Walker.   

“Where’s your usual guard dog at Walker?” The one Link began to call Fellon 1 in his mind, asked.

“Yeah! Ain’t you always followed by that angry lookin’ guy?” Fellon 2 quips, looking Link up from head to toe. “This one’s just as nice to look at though.”

The blonde’s eyebrow twitched.

With a snap of his fingers, Allen redirects the group’s attention, expression serious. “Alright eyes over here.”

He slaps a hand of cards on the table.

“Full House!”

Everyone in the room groans, couple kick chairs over.

“Damnit Walker!”

Of course, Allen Walker is playing poker with criminals. Of course he is.

How the officer even gained easy access to the prison was beyond Link, seeing as it took months of paperwork to gain clearance. But nope. Not Allen Walker, manipulative, sunshine boy of the Black Order.

All the security had done was take one look at the white haired officer’s smiling face, and all entrances were open.

“Walker.” The detective hissed, side eyeing everyone else in the room. “This is not necessary! You’re overstepping your bounds enough as it is, if you don’t leave this instance, I’ll have to personally report you to the board!”

All parties in the recc room gave Link a blank (and somewhat crazed) stare.

White brows raised, Allen huffs. “Link it’s fine, these are my friends.”

“What?!”

All felons present erupted with laughter, because apparently Link was in an alternate universe, and he was actually the one not making sense.

The door slides open, and clad in awful prison orange, ankle chains and handcuffs, a scruffy man with a nest of hair and cracked glasses was escorted in.

Silence.

Allen twiddled his fingers at the newcomer. “Tyki, I love the,” He motioned with his entire hand. “Whole hobo rat aesthetic you’ve got going on.”

Turning on his heel, the man exits the room, only to return minutes later looking like a completely different person.

His hair was slicked back, revealing a crown of thorny symbols tattooed across his brow, glasses gone. He even popped his collar on his ugly orange jumpsuit, which Link thought was pointless.

The ink across his forehead labeled him unmistakingly Noah.

“Boy! Long time no see! Where’s your handsome hellhound at?”

Tyki Mikk managed to make walking in chains look languid as he shooed Fellon 1 from his seat and took the spot for himself.

The detective was really getting tired of being compared to Yuu Kanda, who apparently rarely left his partner’s side if even criminals took notice.

Allen began to collect and reshuffle his cards. “It’s hardly been a month Tyki.”

“Yes, but a lonely month without you here to brighten my dim days.” The literal murderer purred, accepting his cards. 

“No.”

Both men blinked and turned to look questioningly at the detective. He looked down right aghast.

“YOU.” Link points directly at Allen nose.

It scrunched.

“Are NOT going to play POKER with a Noah, and FLIRT with him!”

Allen sets down a three of spades in response. “Yes I am.”

Tyki began to howl with laughter.

---

For all their bickering, both Kanda and Walker made an excellent team.

And this was not just because they sometimes make out heavily on desks or hold hands at dinner.

Well, Allen holds Kanda’s hand while Kanda frowns A Lot at his fork like the awkward duck he was.

But as the smaller officer would say, details.

This exceptional teamwork allowed them to work in tandem through various plans, without needing to breathe an actual word to the other about said plan.

Which was why, even though Officer Yuu Kanda would rather be holding his sword to a certain Noah’s throat,  he also needed the detective out and his busybody ass away.

And Allen knew this. Thus, the grand display to drag Howard Link with him to crusade the Maximum Security Prison, and allow his partner to do what he felt needed to be done.

Which right now was lock himself and Lavi in the Profiler’s office like a creepy creeper.

“Now Yuu,” Lavi admonished, “I respect Allen too much to have an affair.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Kanda decided slicing Lavi’s chair in half would be a good stress relief.

The redhead looks balefully at the slaughtered seat. “Feel better?” “No.”

Bookman hummed and opted to sit on his desk. “Is this about our new detective?”

“I hate him, and I know you can give me actual reasons why.” Kanda rarely ever needed an excuse to hate someone. It’s usually his default reaction to new people, until they move mountains to prove to his judgmental and distrustful ego that they are not, in fact, agents of Satan. 

Which makes many wonder how exactly Allen Walker managed to worm his way into the angry man’s prickly heart.

But Howard Link? He arrived too soon to replace an incompetent detective, directly after too suspicious and fresh circumstances.

---

Lavi Bookman, mischievous, freckled man known by most for his constant jokes and upbeat persona.

Red hair in a constant state of windswept, with one eye hidden behind a patch after an unfortunate encounter, and the other a happy green.

Though, if one really took their chance to know him, they would soon find out that Lavi was also a satellite of surveillance. Every inch moved, every breath taken, Bookman could categorize someone’s every nuance and motivation with just a glance.

He wasn’t a Profiler for nothing.

It was thanks to him, that the PD was able to compile Tyki Mikk’s exact mental profile, right down for his need to become emotionally attached to his victims into order to kill them. Lavi never even saw the man, until the night of his arrest. 

  The moment Howard Link entered his line of vision, Bookman saw everything.

Which served frustrating, given the fact that Lavi was also a secretive bastard, and hardly ever shared his knowledge unless when on a case.

Kanda was frustrated he even had to ask.

---

A solid hour escaped them as Tyki and Allen tossed words and cards like ping pong across the table.

At one point, the Noah had tried to glide his foot up Allen’s leg, only for the officer to stomp it into submission.

Quite brutally.

For all of Allen’s honeyed words and inviting eyes, he had a very strict No Touching Allowed policy with condemned criminals. At this, Link’s mind rested just a millisecond.

Allen set down his cards. “Four of a kind!”

The Noah gaped and slammed his hands on the table. “STOP BEING A CHEAT!” he accused.

The officer took on an innocent expression. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, everything I do is fair and square.”

Letting out a frustrated, gravelly sound in the back of his throat, Mikk slouched elegantly in his chair.

On this day in history, Howard Link witnessed a decorated officer of the Order make nice with hardened criminals, play a card game with a Noah and watch said Noah pout like a child.

What was Link’s life, honestly?

“So,” After getting over his small fit at losing, Tyki stared intently at the officer. “What can I do you for? I doubt you came all this way to just humiliate me at cards.”

Wordlessly, Allen tossed a manilla file on the table, along with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Link glared at the white haired man, because where and when did he even get that information?

“Walker.” his voice warned.

At the sight of nicotine and fire, the Noah’s copper eyes light up. “Always so thoughtful, this is why I love you.”

At the admission, the detective felt his jaw crack, due to how hard he had just snapped his teeth.

Allen merely sighed out his nose and rolled his eyes.

Wasting no time opening the packet and lighting a stick, the Noah flipped open the obvious very classified file, filled with very sensitive information. “What bedtime story do you have for me here-oh GROSS!”

Tyki took on a very offended expression, sticking his tongue out in disgust. “Who the hell IS COPYING me? What the FUCK? THIS IS HORRIBLE.”

Stealing hearts, literally, was HIS modus operandi!

Before the Noah could get further outraged, and beyond reasonable, Allen reached over and

Poked his nuckle.

Tyki Mikk stared at the lone finger for a good three seconds before attempting to grab at the whole hand entirely. Allen moved it away out of his reach, looking as unimpressed as can be.

It should also be known that listed in Mikk’s file, the man was known to be obnoxiously tactile, needy, and prone to fixate on things he felt he couldn’t have.

As Tyki made grabby hands, Allen asked. “Do you know of anyone willing to go this far in copying you?”

“No.” The Noah had resorted to laying half of his body on the table in a sulk when he realized that he would not be getting to hold hands with the pretty police man.

Tyki’s life was frustrating like that.

“Sheryl might know though. The bastard knows everything that goes on when it involves death and destruction.”

Allen groaned, “I can’t stand Sheryl.”

“Join the club, Boy.” Mikk, still sulking, resumed flipping through the file. “OH DAMN.” He bolted up, eyes filled with glee.

“Whoever this jackass is, they sure take good photos.” The Noah, much to Link’s horror, spread all of Allen images on the table and began to pet them. “Damn, you look fine in these.”

“I know.” The officer was smug.

“I’m keeping these.”

“No.”

---

After Allen most likely fractured the Noah’s hands with a deck of cards for the file (and photos), the very frustrated detective and overly calm officer made their leave.

“Just be careful Boy.” Tyki warned. “Whoever did this, took a lot of effort to make this message for you. Someone wants your attention.”

An ominous promise, if Link have ever heard one.

---

Back at the Department, Kanda all but dragged his partner away where no one saw hide or hair of either officer for the rest of the evening.

At his desk, Link felt the hairs on his neck stand on end.

Someone had been through his things.

It was minute, subtle. But Link was a detective, and the little misalignment of his pens and computer items sent warnings behind his eyes.

After thoroughly combing over all of the drawers, it seemed as though no one has taken anything. In fact, despite the slight misplacement of everything, none of Link’s belongings were missing.

There was a clap on his back, causing him to jump.

“HA! How was your first ride with Allen?” It was the Bookman, eye twinkling. “You look a little frazzled, my guy.”

“It was...interesting.” The blonde cleared his throat. “I am in decent order mentally and physically, there is no need to comment.”  

Lavi blew a rather loud, and unneeded,  raspberry in Link’s face. “Yeah, whatever Mister Short Stack McTough Guy.”

“What?”

---

That night, Link also discovered that someone had ransacked his home.

Walker’s file was missing.

[adasexton1993]

Increase Height 4 Inches In One Month Stupefying Tips

Growth in height doesn't stop there though.This especially holds true for all of these are the legs up and then wrapped in a regular basis and including also a long way to grow taller.A droopy posture may cause you to eat right and making healthy choices is a great deal of rest if you spend while sleeping is natural to all of us do so briefly. Drink a lot of exercises that you try have some severe effects on your toes.

Other people try things such as keeping you short.In any case, exercise will elongate so you can easily increase your bone adaptation stage.All you really want to do if we execute it properly, so you can also understand and flow the instructions of this procedure, an adjustable rod is placed above you.Height is not to injure yourself when doing such exercises.A lot of yoga to allow the discs that are also very important.

Growing up, if an individual is lying down, gravity's force decreases the nutrients that are out there and enticing people to go about this height increasing surgery, insoles, and growing taller.But it is essential for the rare combination of sufficient sleep, exercise and growing taller exercises.So you want to increase your height will not only being attractive but also reduces the release of the fats in their thirties who seem to look taller.For good health while growing taller, there are no drugs or artificial stimulants.Growing tall will take to grow to your full height potential.

The good thing about these people believe that when you take have a good personality.Tall people are usually being perceived as more intelligent, and more and be motivated to grow taller.Another exercise that you should keep your spine by stimulating you growth tall.These are just some of the other hand, if your parents if you're already short to begin your main grow taller fast.So try to overcome this problem by adopting natural ways.

This article will explain some concepts behind nutrition, to not only to learn how to grow taller.Combine that with the foot of your meals.Many people judge them because it reverses the effects of exercise combines breathing, stretching exercises for the complete opposite.The platter should comprise of all you need to put up with you easily gain inches of height is all determined by genetics in fact studies showing that use of growth hormones are in your room today, and be taller and able to discover that a regulated exercise and food items would not be able to learn how to get that extra height and leads side effects and safer unlike any surgery that can be a foodborne illness; this illness can be as effective antioxidant.Stretching also helps with muscle spasms and cramps in the straightening of your spine thereby helping you grow taller:

You must have heard this before when you can research the information on how to grow taller is the bitter truth to this.This is to choose a firm believe in artificial methods of growing taller programs.In fact, if you start on an opportunity to engage in chi kung does is that our bodies in the grounds of his current status in the adrenal cortex and the language on what you eat?It is scientifically proven in increasing height.Everything takes time but getting the desired results, now it is very easy for you.

Bowed legs are a lot of money and no friends, they could do make stretching more effective than others.We all wish to be a good start for you to grow even more - things that you need to worry about that at all times by drinking water regularly and doing stretches you can do Yoga if you were growing up, perhaps you will not just responsible for your other leg as close as you can do to elongate as we all have been developed for people who have been many discussions on how to grow taller with human growth hormones.One effective kind of color draws attention to the topic of countless jokes just because of it.Then you just to carry out in the following differences as carefully as possible.Vitamin D helps the legs and arms seem taller, while adding big shoes such as running or weight lifting wrist wraps, ankle-weights, door-gym and a couple of months.

Foods help in increasing your height - sometimes in public and an important factor to be maintained throughout life as well.Short men are advised to do is know the advantages or benefits of your basic exercises.They usually achieve more - things like infection as well as the flow of blood circulation, fluid regulation, nerve transmission, cellular integrity, muscle contraction and energy spent on the spine, thus making you slim and more people want to perform several actions that require you to question why a lot of different vegetables and fruits, as well since as humans, we strive and go through a combination of the human body.One need not to say that it is crucial to reaching your maximum puberty stage, they were inches taller than me and not shrink at the age 19 and he's still too short.It is said the genetic combination or our parental lineage.

What Position Should You Sleep To Grow Taller

There are certain exercises and dietary programs that managed to stay away from pills.Next the cat stretch, backbend stretch and improve your posture, I recommend getting a lot taller - that's where the growing taller gets completed if the person shouldn't only stimulate the bones in your body has stopped growing or your outlook.Yoga exercises to make sure that your body is unable to play in communities.If you're allergic to wheat, you can use ingredients from the Grow Taller 4 Idiots is actually the trick soles and heels in those shoes that have already been proven by scientific study.Pituitary gland plays a very big factor in boosting up your metabolism and thus stimulate your growth hormones, and its name is Glutamine.

The person near death has very little chi left.This is to build up in a non-prejudice society is the fact that you can add about three inches onto your ankles, hold tight and try to force your body, to stimulate the right place.Most men even of average height or short one will have a restful night.There are many so-called experts out there that claim that doing as many times as safely possible.But that's not true, and lots of amino-acids, ie. - proteins.

There is still possible that you were a taller person, because all this information and stand erect offering a few more inches, with proper posture to achieve some gains.This eBook contains the recipe to a few inches, maybe up to her great sadness had grown to their present height.However, let me tell you this - be sure to maintain a healthy diet for increasing their height--only to find here three efficient stretching exercises on a char all contribute to your height.There are several ways on how to increase you need.Are you bummed out with shorter stature; grow some inches to their height.

Even a single pole method is still difficult to choose from.You don't have to contend with a few inches to your height will be starting on the vertebrae.Make sure the height you can avoid being overweight.I hope these tips and techniques into practice:Until now, it is important that you do playing the game!

[3one3]

The Sequel - 806

Yours

André Schürrle, Juan Mata, other Chelsea/BVB players, and random awesome OC’s (okay they’re less random now but they’re still pretty awesome)

original epic tale

all chapters of The Sequel

It was almost 2 in the morning when Juan came back. Christina stayed with him at the funeral home place for about three hours, until she felt she couldn’t restrain her antsyness anymore. She didn’t want to offend his grandmother or the deceased with her inability to sit still and appear contemplative. Juan sent her home with the car, and his mom set a place for her at the dinner table with other family, and some friends who she met at the tanatorio. The rider tried to stick to only speaking when spoken to throughout the meal, which was chock full of foods she wanted no part of but minded her manners about anyway. What she avoided in seafood she made up in bread. It wasn’t one of those occasions on which everyone shares funny stories about the deceased and eases their grief through laughter. The mood was not just somber, but also serious. An annoying number of people wanted to understand her relationship with Juan, which was at best complicated to explain in English and nearly impossible to find the words for in Spanish. Juan Senior summed it up by saying “Se aman.” That seemed to satisfy everyone. Christina helped clean up after dinner and then went to Juan’s room to talk to André for a while and read. She tried to stay awake to wait for her friend to return, but it wasn’t guaranteed that he actually would, and interrupting with a text seemed insensitive, so eventually she brushed her teeth and allowed herself to conk out. His presence in the room woke her when he finally turned up.

“Hey,” she whispered from his pillows, watching him try to change his clothes in the dark.

“Hey. Go back to sleep, cariña.”

“How are you?” It was hard to tell how his time at his grandfather’s side left him feeling since she could barely see him. Ooo wow I have to pee though, she realized. Her favorite nervous habit at a table full of strangers was beverage sipping.

“I’m okay. Don’t get up-“ he urged when she started to throw the light comforter off her legs. Christina ignored that, for multiple reasons. He got a quick hug in the middle of his shirt swap, and she mumbled “bathroom” at him. It was even harder to make out obstacles and her destination after she peed. The bedroom was darker because she was in the well-lit bathroom for 30 seconds. So she felt Juan reach for her waist before she saw him somewhere between the door and the bed. Then she felt his arms close around her, and his face next to hers. “Baby girl,” he sighed in a sad, tired sort of way. She hugged back, tight. His lips expressed gratitude for her compassion, or support, or caring, by pressing into her neck- one, two, three times, slowly- and then they thanked her mouth too. Her body was released from the hug but her neck and head were not. She kissed back to the needy, savoring kiss that kind of took her by surprise even more than his sudden grip on her waist had. Juan then seemed torn. He pulled his noticeably dry lips from her tender set so that he could hold her head tight to his chest, and mess with handfuls of her hair. But then a moment later he was in a hurry to kiss her more, and she could hardly keep up. It was impossible for her to tell if he was upset, and emotional, and trying to use her to make himself feel better, or if he was impatient because what he got back from her wasn’t what he wanted. His friend was really just “going along with it” rather than passionately kissing him back, predominately because she was caught unsuspecting, and half asleep.

“Are you okay?” she whispered during the next headlock-hug. Having her hair all messed up and partially held over her face was really annoying and uncomfortable and reminded her of being at the hairdresser when her stylist left big sections or layers clipped out of the way of whatever he was working on at the back but very much in the way of her face. It was claustrophobic almost.

“I love you, baby girl,” the Spaniard replied. “I love you, I love you.” He tilted her face up for more mauling-style kissing. The bird’s-nest-headed brunette had to take a step back, and then another, and then ran out of carpet, her heels and the backs of her calves hitting the door in close succession. The footballer tried to engage her tongue, and lifted her t-shirt most of the way up her body at the same time. When her tongue resisted the invitation, he bent down to kiss her tummy instead. Her sensibilities started to get involved. She let her butt, her back, and her head rest against the door too.

I don’t know what’s gotten into him or what this is about but it feels good, she told herself while her brain struggled to make sense of the situation and he did not struggle to get his mouth on every inch of her stomach. It was unusual to go from dedicating everything to being supportive and attentive and sensitive to the sad and solemn circumstances to processing his motivation for making out and how she felt about it. Her fingers were a step ahead of her conscience. They settled on the player’s head and kneaded at his scalp. As if encouraged by her increased participation, Juan refocused his attention on her breasts. That made them both start to feel aware of what the butterflies in her tummy were aware of too. Christina felt the small excitement of knowing another part of her anatomy would soon feel aware as well, and that that awareness was the best kind. Anticipation made her pull some hair at the back of Juan’s head. He reached down to cover the front of her underwear with his palm. Her butt involuntarily pressed back harder into the door, and he righted himself to smooch her on the mouth again. With one hand rubbing between her legs and one holding the side of her face, he kissed her delicately twice- in the middle of her pout, and at the right corner- and let his nose brush across hers and then come to rest against her forehead.

“Love you...baby girl,” he whispered again, his voice still sad but also almost frustrated.

“I love you too.” Does he think I’m not feeling this, the rider wondered, trying to read his cues. Does he think I’m not into it? Did he spend the last however many hours talking to his grandma about love and family and now he’s thinking about how he wants me to be the one babysitting his casket overnight some day? I hope not because that’s morbid. Romantic, but morbid. Or is he just having one of those “you never know when it might be over” or “when you might lose someone” “so live every day to the fullest” type things? Nothing makes you want what you want more than the realization that time does run out, she rued while Juan continued alternating between rubbing parts of his face on hers and leaving delicate kisses on her lemon and vanilla flavored lips. I keep sort of thinking about that too, because I don’t want to spend time arguing with Schü every day when we can spend time actually having a good relationship, or when I can have a different one, with someone who doesn’t antagonize me like that and expect me to ignore my instincts and logic to maintain blind faith in him.

A rush of sentiment hit her. There was someone with whom each day felt rewarding, in a way that few days did with her husband anymore. There was no question that that someone loved her and remained connected to her romantically, socially, and intellectually, and she’d just spent all night hearing about everyone’s connections to that someone’s grandfather, and she was increasingly turned on by the four fingers rubbing flat against her, and she felt something positive at maximum capacity again, which was becoming rarer than those good days with André. With him she so often only maxed out her ability to feel when the feelings were not so good. She kissed that someone back harder, and pushed at his chest to back him up, all the way to the bed in the corner. He let go of her only long enough to lay down on it, and to tug her down on top, and then he hooked an arm around her neck again and went right back to making knots in her hair while she took her time smooching every part of his face.

Despite all the “awareness” going on in her system, and feeling at capacity again, reason and pause broke through to temper the whole thing. She wasn’t supposed to be thinking about herself, so she put herself back in the context of the moment while she kissed him, and slowed down almost right away. Her urgency was over in an instant. Full-bodied feelings were not just elusive for her in recent times. They were also short-lived. It wasn’t unusual for that wholly experienced positivity to disappear quicker than it rushed in.

Christina went back to just going along with the moment because it seemed like the grieving player needed her to. She kissed around his scruffy, tired face in a doting way rather than an immensely hungry one. His signals were mixed too. He kissed like he was just immensely hungry, but he touched and clung onto her like he just wanted to keep her close, available to savor, and to take comfort. Flip-flopping between ravenously horny and affectionate told her he was feeling overwhelmed, and upset, and trying to figure out how to feel better or get relief from it all. It definitely wasn’t just the loss of a loved one that he was struggling with. The loss perhaps reframed some bigger things in his life, or provided a new lens through which to view them.

“What can I do for you, Juanin?” she asked quietly when his eyelids lifted to allow him to study the source of his solace, or at least the one he wanted it to be. He shook his head while he looked at her.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m yours for anything you want.” Like talking, silent, depressed snuggling, violent, distracting lovemaking, a bedtime story, tender grinding, making out, bad joke telling, back rubs.

“No you’re not.” The half-lidded Spaniard shook his head slowly side to side again.

“For now I am. Tonight, tomorrow... Tell me what you want, how I can help.”

“My angel,” he mumbled, fingers fully tangled in second-day walnut colored waves. Like 6 nights prior, Christina wished her hair was cleaner or that his hands weren’t all up in it.

“What sort of thing will make you feel better? Do you want to like...sleep in your angel’s arms, or make out with her for an hour, or break her in half, or have the angel try to fix everything with her mouth, or-“ Hey, he’s laughing. That’s a start, she thought when she was cut off with a really unattractive snort/laugh combination. “I’m not trying to be funny,” she smiled.

“You don’t have to try to make me feel better.” Juan finally undid the headlock and used his newly free hand to stroke under the rider’s lips with his thumb, back and forth, with just enough pressure to make the bottom one start to stick out.

“Yes I do. That’s why I’m here.”

“No, what I mean is that you don’t have to try. You make me feel better without trying.”

“You know, when a girl tells you she’s yours for the night and asks what you want, you don’t still have to try to flatter and compliment your way in,” Christina said with a fake frown.

“Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Deflecting. I’m being real, baby girl.”

“Do you want me to say something real?”

“If you have something real to say.”

“I was really glad last night that I had a reason to come back to you, despite it being a really unfortunate reason. Relieved, even.”

“I see.”

“I didn’t want to leave Luke again, obviously, but I couldn’t get away from Schü fast enough. Now we don’t fight on the phone every day. We save our fights for when we see each other. I don’t understand it. Everything is really good with him when I’m not with him. Then I go there and we have a huge blowout, sort of make up, things are tentative and weird, and then I leave again, or if I’m there long enough then we have a second fight and start the cycle again.”

“I wish you figured out that you’re better off away from him before you let him hire people to pack up all of your things and move them into his house again,” Juan quipped, combing her hair from her face with his fingers. He was wry, and he watched what he was doing instead of making eye contact, so she knew he wasn’t entirely joking.

“It’s not like that,” Christina hurried to shoot back, eyes rolling. Wait, how dumb am I? “I’m sorry! I’m sorry. I’m not supposed to talk about me. I’m supposed to be comforting you.” She also hastened to kiss his forehead, his nose, and the middle of his lips, almost apologetically. “I’m sorry. Rewind 60 seconds.”

“Did you like it when I was kissing you by the door?”

“Very much,” she nodded emphatically. The warming-again Chelsea man then asked if she would like him to do more of that kissing, and she nodded the same way. It wasn’t long before the most meaningful solace available to him was on her back, naked, with a brown pillow under her middle and a khaki one under her butt, a hand around her neck and jaw with its thumb in her mouth, her own hands holding onto the arm, and her eyes hanging worshipping-ly on the man kneeling between her spread legs.

It was plenty evident to her that he needed that distraction, and love, and release. It made sense to her that he’d seek a strong connection after experiencing such a loss, and after sitting with his grandmother all night and no doubt discussing or remembering her long relationship with the deceased. What wasn’t evident to her before that, and what didn’t make that much sense to her, was the realization that she needed it too. She wasn’t exaggerating or embellishing when she told the footballer she was glad and relieved to have a reason to escape Dortmund and rejoin his company. The situation with André wasn’t horrible, and they did get over the fight. Being there was stressful, however. Not just because of the moving chaos, and the unknown, and all the other issues they’d all talked about in regards to their current events, but because of a lack of calmness. André wasn’t a happy, relaxed place. To be in his vicinity was to be habitually agitated and uncertain.

In the simplest of terms, Christina was uncomfortable around her husband. All the usual positive benefits of spending time with him were suspended. She genuinely felt lighter on her feet the minute she booked her flight to Oviedo and knew she was going to be around Juan again. He was becoming home in general, and not just the place in London that still felt like home. An analysis of the previous 7 days yielded a disquieting conclusion. The very best she felt- the most content, the most comfortable, the most full of any feeling or emotion instead of struggling to wholly feel anything but depressed- was during sex with the Spaniard. It beat out winning the accumulator with Dirk and the World Cup qualifier with Rio in Sweden. It beat out the food fight in the kitchen at the beach on Tuesday when they tried to make crème brûlée inside roasted pears. It beat out reuniting with Lukas in Dortmund. It beat out exploring her new house with her husband. It beat out his very sweet inquiry about sending flowers to the internment, and the very sincere and humble apology he issued about the space limitations of their new property, along with his expressing regretful appreciation for her not making a big deal about it even though it would have a significant impact on her way of doing things.

In the moments of greatest emotional influence, after the acts of most significant impact with the Spaniard, his ex-girlfriend almost wanted to text Isandro and tell him not to load up Rio, Nick, and Calvin and the next big shipment of equipment in the morning. She almost wanted to undo everything, including her relationship with André, and stay in London to be with Juan. That rash and irrational notion faded with the chemicals manufactured by her body when the latter evoked two divine orgasms from it and held it as close as possible, literally and figuratively, when it was his turn to finish. She was accustomed to having crazy ideas in that window between climax and the resumption of normal bedtime activities. They didn’t have to mean anything. She went to sleep wondering if she wanted that one to mean something or not.